Agency Demands $111,930 for Database Description

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) filed a protest with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), objecting to a demand that the university-based data research organization pay $111,930 for a description of the information in one of its databases. TRAC seeks a description of the agency's processing of requests for naturalization that it receives. The FOIA request had been pending without a response for nearly 4 years - 1,316 days.

Read more about it here and here.

FOI At Work: Maryland State Police Spied on War Protesters

Undercover Maryland State Police officers conducted surveillance on war protesters and death penalty opponents, including some in Takoma Park, for more than a year while Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. was governor, documents released yesterday show.

Detailed intelligence reports logged by at least two agents in the police department's Homeland Security and Intelligence Division reveal close monitoring of the movements as the Iraq war and capital punishment were heatedly debated in 2005 and 2006.

Organizational meetings, public forums, prison vigils, rallies outside the State House in Annapolis and e-mail group lists were infiltrated by police posing as peace activists and death penalty opponents, the records show. The surveillance continued even though the logs contained no reports of illegal activity and consistently indicated that the activists were not planning violent protests.

More here.